MOST Liverpool fans will agree that a major downfall for us last season, and a key reason for Kenny Dalglish leaving the club (despite what a certain red-nosed Manchester United manager claimed recently), was the team’s lack of edge in front of goal.
The team scored only one more goal than Blackburn, who finished second bottom. They notched only 47 goals in total, the lowest in Liverpool’s Premier League history.
Of course, we all know that the woodwork was hit on 30+ occasions, penalties were missed and goalkeepers like John Ruddy and Michel Vorm pulled world beating performances out against us last season.
Luck certainly wasn’t on our side in terms of finding the net, but often you make your own luck in football, and the truth of the matter is that Liverpool just weren’t clinical enough when they needed to be.
What’s more, if scoring goals and being more clinical is a key priority for Brendan Rodgers, his task has been made more difficult by the fact that two of Liverpool’s most reliable sources of goals – Dirk Kuyt and Maxi Rodriguez – have already left this summer after several years of hard work and goals from midfield. In the 2010/11 season, Kuyt and Rodriguez were Liverpool’s top two scorers, and last season they were fifth and sixth top scorer respectively. Both averaged roughly a goal every four games in their Liverpool careers, and both will now be playing somewhere else next season.
Lastly of course, there’s continued uncertainty around the future of Andy Carroll who, whilst he didn’t score a hatful of goals last season, at least finished the campaign looking like a striker who was going to, with form and confidence under his belt, contribute more goals this time around. If Rodgers is happy to let Carroll go as well, then where are the goals going to come from?
The routes to get goals into this team are there – depending on who those new signings turn out to be and how quickly the team takes Rodgers’ new style and formation on board, there is plenty of potential to exceed last season’s tally and then some. We’ll miss Dirk and we’ll miss Maxi – they’ve both rightly been fan favourites in their time at Anfield – but this is a new era, and there are enough factors in the manager’s favour to bring the goals (and the points) in to drive the team back up the table.
I think Rodgers will bank on five key factors that will not only make up the loss of Dirk and Maxi (and also potentially Carroll) but also increase Liverpool’s efficiency in front of goal.
Click on our new signing below to see five factors that will help overcome our goalscoring deficiencies:
Find me on twitter @rossco1981
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Luis suarez will do the job